Soup beats S&P 📈
40 holiday gift ideas from our guest and an inventor's secret to live to a 100 years!
Good morning. It’s a big week at Simmer with the end of the year fast approaching. Three main things that we want to focus on:
We have called upon a special guest to up the swag quotient on our newsletter this week (more on that later).
There appears to be a shortage of Santas this year according to Mitch Allen, the founder of event planning company Hire Santa. So if you feel good about reds and have familiarity with the major plot points in Miracle on 34th Street, you should consider applying.
As this will become more important as the winter goes on, we have to ask... If someone asks to borrow your ChapStick, do you let them?
In the food world
🍜 Soupy success
Campbell Soup Company is piping hot after announcing that their results were more exciting than their cans of soup. Your broth (sorry for that!) IRA would show their stock at a 52 week high. Organic sales jumped 15% mainly attributed to the favorable response to the company’s use of AI to search new product ideas, inflation driven price hikes and shifting consumer trends to cheaper long-lasting foods.
🫘 Bubba Gump coffee co?
Tom Hanks, recently did the most Tom Hanks thing you could imagine. The preeminent star and Mr. nice guy of Hollywood recently started Hanx for Our Troops, his new ethically sourced and environmentally sustainable coffee company. The company will use all their profits towards organizations that support the welfare U.S. military members and their families.
🥖 National heritage
With an average French person consuming half a baguette a day, the tradition of baking and enjoying the iconic French baguette was added to UNESCO’s list of “intangible cultural heritage of humanity”. With traditional bakeries in France disappearing faster than a Bounty roll, this latest honor will enable the country’s baking industry to apply for funding to help preserve this tradition.
☕️Teatime with Abigail
Your eyes are the probably the only thing that you don’t want hot sauce on! Everyone needs hot sauce and we have invited Abigail Koffler to take over this week’s edition for a much needed kick to see out the year.
Abigail is a Brooklyn based writer and the founder of This Needs Hot Sauce (TNHS) — a food newsletter that she started in 2017 while getting over an unsatisfying job and break up (tubs of ice cream isn’t the only way). Subscribe here and you won’t be disappointed. TNHS talks about recipes, restaurant recommendations and articles to read. Everything is vegetarian and approachable.
For those who are more into Match.com instead of Tinder and need more information prior to swiping right, here’s Abigail for you!
What’s a food you like unapologetically?
Boxed brownie mix is a perfect product. I’ve never felt the urge to make brownies from scratch—there’s no need to. I also love diner grilled cheese with kraft singles or whatever industrial cheese they use. I will dip it in ketchup and ask for an extra pickle.
What’s the worst cooking tip you have ever received?
I don’t trust dump style savory recipes! You get so much flavor from toasting spices, sweating aromatics and letting flavor develop. Most recipes lie about how long it takes to cook vegetables—carrots take a long time to roast and get a little charred but it’s completely hands off.
What recipe do you wish to be known for?
I love my family’s pumpkin bread recipe, which we got from a friend my mom met in preggercize classes before I was born. I love seeing people make it and it really fueled my sister and me when we were growing up.
What viral food trend did you actually try, and it worked?
I joined TikTok in April 2020 and I don’t even want to think about how many hours I’ve spent on that app. I’ve made the viral baked feta pasta (you know, the one that led to a feta shortage in Finland) several times and it’s actually really good (and easy).
Holiday gift guide
Holiday season is upon us and with the shortage of Santas this year, we will be responsible for finding gifts for our loved ones ourselves. Luckily, by upgrading to paid version of the The Weather Channel app in February, Abigail foresaw the rough conditions in the North Pole and came up with this handy gifting guide.
According to us, while gifting someone, one should consider a person’s looks, bank balance and what they gifted you. But thankfully Abigail’s opinions differ from ours. The stuff in this guide is either something Abigail has purchased, gifted, or been gifted… You can blindly trust it and send either one of us any/all of these items.
When in doubt, go with something consumable: Fancy olive oil, jam, honey, hot sauce, tea or coffee are pretty close to universal crowd pleasers. They’re clutter free and usually a bit nicer than what someone would buy for themselves.
Practical gifts have their place: One of my best discoveries this year was capsules from Cadence. They’re designed for travel and store your liquids in a sealed magnetic capsule with a custom label. Perfect to use for all your travels.
Listening is the secret to gift giving: Gifts can feel like an expression of love when they acknowledge or celebrate something you love. Brainstorm a gift based on an offhand comment or random observation. A Paid Invoices candle for your friend who just went freelance or a compost bin for your friend stressed about climate change.
Quiz: The price is right!
We know gifting is hard but you know what is harder? Guessing the correct price of this 10 piece cast iron set from Le Creuset… Probably on every wedding registry.
The set includes: 4 1/2 qt. Round Dutch oven, 5 1/4 qt. Signature Roaster, 2 1/4 qt. Braiser, 1 3/4 qt. Signature Saucepan, 10 1/4" Signature Skillet, Square Skillet Grill, 10 inch Glass Lid with stainless steel knob. Happy guessing!
*Answer at the bottom.
Abigail’s recipe recs
I have to plug Meal Prep Made Simple, my recently published ebook with Erica Adler. We excerpted the Go-To Green Soup, and it’s perfect for a cold day.
I first made this salad from Sugan Spungen when I was in college and it’s so good at a holiday table. The dressing and cheese really tenderize the kale and the crunchy almonds are almost like croutons.
Pasta is one of the things I cook most frequently and I love the vodka sauce from Dan Pelosi. I’m lactose intolerant so I substitute one can of coconut milk for the heavy cream.
Did you know?
The inventor of petroleum jelly ate a spoonful everyday, claiming it had tremendous health benefits. He lived to be 96.
A type of plastic can be made from milk. It is odorless, insoluble in water, biodegradable, antiallergenic, antistatic and virtually nonflammable.
The Mayan and Aztec cultures were the first to make "hot chocolate." This precursor to hot chocolate was used for religious ceremonies, including coming-of-age celebrations and weddings.
While this simmers…
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Answer
The correct price of the box is $1693.